


choose your cost

by flowersforlukey



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Love Confessions, M/M, Pining, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-24 01:54:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14945420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowersforlukey/pseuds/flowersforlukey
Summary: The echo of Thor’s voice rings like a haste alarm, the three words barely spoken into the air a deafening noise.“I… I love you, brother,” Loki repeats the words that were spoken to him just seconds ago, putting more emphasis to the last word than necessary. He looks away from Thor, guilt drawing out a long sigh from himself. “But not in that way.”





	choose your cost

**Author's Note:**

> wow this is painful for me. why do i keep torturing these two anyway?
> 
> Enjoy! :)
> 
> Title is from "Heart to Heart" by Ambrosia

The wall that separates their chambers does more beneficial things than Loki gives it credit for.

For one, it is the only physical matter that keeps Thor from trailing behind him and everywhere Loki goes like he's no more than a servant sworn to be of pleasing service. And just so as mentioned, because Loki doesn’t know why Thor is always waiting for him at the other side of the door in the wake of mornings, knocking and insisting they go together to the halls for their meals.

Of course it doesn’t really happen all the time. Loki still finds spending his afternoons inside the library rather more entertaining than wasting the hours away by sparring in the training grounds.

On other days, Loki would occupy his mind with political matters, and he is only grateful that Odin accepts his display of interest rather openly. It’s just another one of Thor’s losses—an opportunity for himself to actually reconsider regarding varying political views like his younger brother and how he’d have to affix his own one day. That much is necessary to be made done once he ascends to the throne.

And on some other days, Thor would just be  _there,_ leaving Loki little to no time to wonder how his brother had found him in places Loki thought Thor would never suspect.

Places like the built wells secured in one of Asgard's secluded areas. Loki has found himself walking to the wells more often these days. He doesn't know how he had the sudden interest, nor does he try to figure out why.

That was just the first reason. The second one is somehow just too unlooked-for.

Thor’s festivities and his openly displayed crave for accompaniment on such events has never been kept a secret. Especially that Thor wears the fact proudly on his sleeve, stripping all layers from his reputation as Asgard’s crown prince until he’s back to being a mere teenager, refusing to let the promise of the crown pry his will to his own freedom.

Loki doesn’t blame his brother for it. When a feast is held and Loki catches Thor pulling a faceless maiden from the taverns, he only adds another digit to the count.

Usually, Loki would stay far longer in the halls, refusing to retire back to his chambers for he knows what awaits at the room next to his. Thor is perhaps already being devoured by then, and evidence of that certain event is far from Loki’s appreciation.

On other nights, he would be too exhausted from the cheers of merry to fight against leaving Thor peacefully while he attends to his personal matters, and Loki would return to his chambers with nothing but the burning desire for sleep.

Sometimes he would be given just what he had wanted, though sometimes Loki would  _hear._ Everytime he does, a note is left inside his head, reminding him how much he needs to educate Thor about respecting the people who just happen to be living near his perimeters, and seeing to it that they hear nothing of his already suspicious doings.

Apart from his ears picking up what seems to be Thor’s strangled moans, Loki would catch an earshot of the maiden’s share of whimpers.

Often Loki would wonder if the idea of just bringing the maiden to her rooms instead of his own had ever crossed Thor’s mind. Surely it hasn’t, why did Loki ever think that Thor’s dimwitted mind would just enhance itself at least for his plays of pleasure?

It goes on like that for many years into their brotherhood. Loki thinks he might just deserve an offer of praise for being the most uninterested and uncritical brother Thor could ever ask for.

Until it all stops happening all of the sudden.

Thor stops bringing people to his room (he says people because Loki is sure he’s had more than one at the same time), the moaning stops, the reckless act put up inside the taverns is forgotten, and Thor no longer keeps track over his brother altogether.

If Loki isn’t too busy wondering just  _why,_ he’d maybe spend just enough time acknowledging the fact that Thor’s absence has been bothering him at late.

There’s nothing he can do, when Thor himself has made it clear that he isn’t in the mood to discuss this unnerving change to anyone, even to Loki.

He never is.

So Loki stares at the wall, once empty and dark until he had painted it with tapestries of Asgard’s greatest battles among realms—his arrival in this life included.

Loki wonders if the wall built to separate their chambers has managed to separate their souls as well.

Loki could only pray to the Norns that it hasn’t.

…

A month has already passed when Loki finds the rabbit hole.

To be fair, it takes him completely by surprise. Nothing is ever going to make sense once his brain decides to process the information, and the worst thing is, Loki does  _not_  want to process the information.

How in the nine realms did this happen?

Thor, who’s still completely oblivious to Loki’s struggle in accepting the harsh truth laid out before him, lives throughout that month getting lesser and lesser contact with his brother.

All the while Loki spends that month losing control of himself to his own head, allowing thoughts to ring out as he sleeps and tastes the bitter truth in his chest.

…

He finds Thor one night, when Frigga dismisses them from supper and Thor hesitates no longer to make a bee line for the door.

Loki catches up to him in the empty corridors. They’re out of earshot now.

If Thor finds himself bothered at Loki’s presence, he doesn’t comment about it.

“Brother,” Loki says, only to get his attention. “Are you unwell?”

Thor doesn’t halt in his tracks. If anything, he walks faster, clearly in haste, but Loki follows his pace just as well.

“Why would you think that?”

“I do not think that.” Loki has to stop himself from speaking words that shoot straight from the burn inside his chest. He must think very carefully. “I  _see_ it, brother. You are clearly unwell. Certainly you would not be rather evidently evasive towards me these past few weeks without reason, yes?”

A long sigh drags out from Thor. He stops in his tracks to throw his brother a side-way glance. “It’s truly nothing personal.”

 _Norns_. Loki truly wants to laugh, and he definitely would, if only the the brutal slap to his chest did not sting at those words.

His tongue runs dry. Instead of answering, he slides a hand around Thor’s wrist and the world around them soon blurs into a forceful motion and a bright flash of white.

…

Loki cannot remember the last time he’s been to this place, but he assumes it was that night when Thor slammed the door to his face after a heated argument with Loki about his odd behavior.

Loki had not returned to his chambers that night.

When their legs stop wobbling after the teleportation, Loki brings them to the biggest well in the area. They pass colums of oak and built mahogany, and he almost forgets why they’re here in the first place.

Thor doesn’t look too happy to be there. Loki figures he must be curious as to why he had brought them to a place that’s still unfamiliar to him. He has never been here with Loki, but it could be the first trip of the many.

If there’s _ever_ a next time.

A frown threatens to pull at Loki’s face. He must not show how much  _this_  affects him.

Would they go on having the same relationship as before? Move forward and push their mistakes past behind their trail?

Loki despises the fact that he already has the answers to those questions.

It’s very unlikely that things will not change, because they  _will—_ they already have, and Loki is not ready to see that happen.

Not when he needs Thor, not when he _just_ needs Thor.

The wind bites at their skin and Loki sighs at the chill. This shouldn’t be difficult. Only that it already is, and everything peaceful he sees becomes a lie to the truth that things are already broken between them.

Mostly, Loki feels like he was the one who had shattered everything into shards.

Thor leans against the well. Loki can’t help but look at him and study his face.

“You knew, didn’t you,” Thor speaks, but it isn’t phrased as a question.

Loki doesn’t answer right away, afraid that if he so much as breathes, Thor would scream and Loki would fall apart and they will finally lose each other to the aching guilt that’s pulling them apart like a tether.

Ripples appear at the center where Thor dips a finger in the water. Distraction, Loki notes.

“I do,” Loki whispers. Thunder rolls across the sky, startling ravens and cracking the sky into a web of lights.

“Since when?”

“I cannot really tell. Perhaps a month ago.”

Thor releases a chuckle. It’s bitter, obviously pained. “Yet you kept it from me.”

“ _You_ kept this from me,” Loki says flatly.

Thor stares at him with an unfamiliar glint in his eye. “And you suppose I should have told you back then?”

Loki swallows his bile. No word attempts to enter his head so he says nothing and darts his attention to the well.

Thunder has passed, and the moon illuminates their reflections on the water. Loki feels something poke at his chest, and when he closes his eyes, he realizes that it’s the guilt again, stabbing him, piercing pain into his heart and making it bleed out of shame.

He doesn’t want to lose Thor.

“Why?” he asks instead. The question is too difficult to answer so he doesn’t expect an explanation from Thor.

Except that he does, and Loki hates how much desperate he is for answers.

He’s desperate for them, to know how Thor had begun thinking about this way for him, because Loki himself had tried so hard to find those answers, but he just could not understand  _how_.

He wishes he does.

“Why, brother?” Loki asks again, now turning to Thor, and face finally falling as he takes in the sight of Thor’s face.

There’s shame, but he looks more pained than embarrassed. He shouldn’t feel embarrassed, because that isn’t what Loki is asking for.

He just needs Thor to be honest to him, and Loki will be honest to him as well, no matter how painful it could be for his brother.

“Say something, Thor.”

“How could I?” Thor asks. He’s barely breathing. “How could it not be you? You’ve touched my soul in ways I have never known about, you’ve spoken of your mind to me when you never so much as opened to anyone before. You let me listen to you, you let me protect you, you let me be there for you because you say you’ll never ask anyone else to take my place.”

Thor’s eyes glisten in the dark. The drumming inside Loki’s chest only grows louder.

“You’re my brother, and I need you. You’re never there, but you’re there. I know I’m not making sense, but this is what you do to me, brother.” Thor pauses to breathe. Loki thinks his chest might explode. “You let me  _need_  you, Loki.”

Loki looks away, completely torn between wanting to leave and desperately aching to hold Thor close. But there’s just no in-between.

Loki tries to come up with words, anything, just so he could assure Thor that he could still be strong and that he will never let anything break the bond between them.

But it’s difficult when Loki himself is already falling apart. His hand reaches for the rim of the well, balacing himself so he wouldn’t fall.

“Thor,” he starts. “I did so because I’m your brother. I’m supposed to be there for you. I never say it through words, but through my actions you will see.”

“I know, Loki,” Thor replies. He sounds just as desperate. “What good would it do if I had let you known? You would never understand.”

Loki doesn’t do anything to deny it. That’s closest thing Thor could say to the truth.

Loki reaches out for his hand. Thor retreats it before he could be touched.

“I will try to understand, Thor. I can promise if I must.”

It is a very dangerous promise indeed. Dangerous because it is unlikely to be kept.

When Thor laughs this time, he sounds defeated—a torture Loki might never be able to free his mind from. Thor sounds weak, because he is, and maybe Loki is just as weak as well.

This is a battle neither of them can win.

“You are the wisest I know, but my emotions are beyond you.” Thor tells him. He’s looking at Loki now, eyes screaming and chest split open. “You will never understand this, Loki. You will never understand that…”

Thor trails off because it’s too much. Loki is beautiful underneath the moonlight and it’s painful, oh so very painful.

Thor breathes in again, and Loki falls apart at the sound.

“…that I love you.”

The echo of Thor’s voice rings like a haste alarm, the three words barely spoken into the air a deafening noise.

“I… I love you, brother,” Loki repeats the words that were spoken to him just seconds ago, putting more emphasis to the last word than necessary. He looks away from Thor, guilt drawing out a long sigh from himself. “But not in that way.”

Tears spill from Loki’s face. He used to think that Thor would be the first one to fall apart, but he’s proven wrong.

When he looks up, he spots the stain of mositure on Thor’s cheek. He’s no longer looking at Loki, for his eyes are trained to the moon and its beauty that reflects the person right in front of his eyes.

Loki leans in, wraps a warm hand around Thor’s neck, and their eyes finally meet. Loki closes his eyes and presses his lips to the corner of Thor’s mouth and stays there, barely breathing, but never leaving.

He can’t lose Thor, not because of this. To lose him would be having his soul ripped apart in two and half of it burning into the void.

If he loses Thor, he loses part of himself forever.

Thor’s eyes are closed when Loki pulls away. Not a single word surfaces into the tension between them, because the tension is already gone.

Loki has fought and will fight to keep it away.

He holds Thor that night, bringing him to his chest when they return to Loki’s chambers.

The hand he had placed on top of Thor’s chest just over his heart is full of promises Loki wishes to never break. The promise to fight, to keep themselves at bay, grounded, and to keep them together through every victory and bloodshed.

And the arm Thor had wrapped around Loki’s waist is just another of his promises—the promise to stay. Like always.

Their hearts may never beat the same way, but with those promises kept, their souls will never have to be separate.

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you think! Also, if I did prompts on tumblr, would you read them?
> 
> Thank you for reading! And thanks for the feedback on my last work.
> 
> (angsty slow-burn thorki one-shot coming SOON)


End file.
